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Signing in with an account key

You can sign in to Privacy Pools with your wallet, or with an account key exported from the app. Both open the same account. They aren't equal, and the app will tell you "connect the owning wallet" at certain points. This page is the list of those points.

What the account key is​

Your pool account's keys are derived from your wallet. The account key is an export of that derived material. Anyone holding it can see your whole pool history and spend your shielded balance, so treat it like a seed phrase. The export screen masks it and asks you to confirm before revealing.

Its purpose is convenience: sign in on a device where your wallet isn't, without a wallet extension, and use your balance from there.

What a key session can do​

  • See your balances and history on every chain the account has used.
  • Withdraw, send privately and swap, through the relayer.
  • Pay a payment request from your pool balance, using Pay via Private Transfer.
  • Create payment requests, unsigned. A signed request needs the wallet.
  • Import a note from a claim link onto this device.

What it can't do​

Everything below is an onchain transaction that has to come from the owner wallet.

  • Deposit. Shielding money moves it from a wallet, so it needs the wallet.
  • Register. Registration is signed by the owner wallet. If your account isn't registered yet, a key session can't fix that. Connect the wallet once, register, then the key session works for everything above.
  • Claim. Anchoring received money onchain is a registration. A key session can import what a claim link carries onto the device, but can't claim it. See Claiming money you've received.
  • Exit. The emergency withdrawal is sent from, and paid to, the owner wallet. Use Withdraw from a key session, or connect the wallet.
  • Pay via Wallet. Paying a request straight from a wallet needs a wallet. Pay via Private Transfer works.
  • Switch chains for a request. A payment request is for one chain. A key session opens on that chain or not at all.

Keep the key safe​

Losing the key isn't fatal, because you can export it again from a wallet session. Someone else getting it is. It gives full read and spend access to the account and can't be revoked separately from the account itself. It isn't a backup of your notes either: it restores what your device can rediscover onchain, and nothing that only ever lived in a link or in browser storage.